W is for What Hurts the Most
by Tessenchan
Summary: [Oneshot] My final submission for the Summer Alphabet Challenge. Alternate ending to the second season: Charlie deals with Amita's decision to go to Harvard.


**A/N:** Charmita as seen through the eyes of an Anti-Amita. I've had this one cooking since _Undercurrents_ first aired. It's also a songfic, which I tend to avoid because they are prone to becoming Supercheese, but.. me loves me some cheese now and then. Uh, just FYI, I stayed up all night to write this, bordering on 23 hours since I last saw my bed... So, deities only know what kind of mess is contained below.

**Disclaimer:** Characters you recognize belong to Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci and CBS and the Scott brothers and-- well, the point is that they don't belong to me. Also, the song I used is _What Hurts the Most_ by Rascal Flatts.

**W is for What Hurts the Most**

_"I've accepted Harvard's offer."_

The sound of raindrops outside the window had always sounded soothing to Charlie. As a child, the sound of night rains had been a treasured comfort, and the absolute peacefulness of it had been a fine backdrop for his more complicated thoughts. Though he had always preferred to work to music, guitars and drums and low vocals that drowned out the entire world except whatever was on his chalkboard, there were some moments when the headphones were thrown off in a diva-like tantrum. When so many, myriad and varied thoughts overcrowded his head and the music was still there, reduced to a buzzing in his ears...

The headphones just had to come off and there had to be silence.

And so, in those moments, there was always the rain. Serenity, in its most natural perfection.

_"So, I'll be moving to Boston, and..."_

No matter how long he listened to the rain today though, it only reminded him of how gray and listless he felt inside. There was no sun, only endless gray and black clouds that poured tears over the Earth, and Charlie could find no comfort in their symphony. He stared at his cup, at the now-cold coffee fermenting in it. He hadn't touched it. Didn't even know why he'd ordered it. He'd known when he got here, saw her face, that he wasn't going to drink anything, eat anything. Almost five dollars worth of coffee, down the proverbial and metaphorical tubes.

He felt numb. Not physically, because he was --strangely-- very acutely aware of every single square inch of his body. He had settled into his own skin like sand at the bottom of the ocean, and like the ocean currents swirling about the sand and yet never really lifting it up, life went on without him.

The cashiers changed shifts; customers came and went; a mother and her son dashed across the street out of the rain; a young woman trotted by with her pug. The station the cafe had its radio set on went through almost an hour of music, and Charlie hardly heard a single lyric.

No, this numbness was emotional. One third of his trinity was gone. She wasn't even really gone yet, and already he couldn't imagine life without her. What part of his day didn't coincide with hers at some point? She was his rock, his friend, his colleague, his student, the object of his greatest confusion.

Of all the things Charlie had been able to predict, of all the robbers and murderers and cheats, of all the batting averages or courtship gifts or radar speed detection fallacies... Amita had been one of the most difficult. How easy it was to predict motions, predict habits and preferences, once you had watched someone enough. But he had watched her for three years, and he still couldn't see her. Her one constant was that she had no constant; the way she was unpredictable was the control in the multi-variable experiment of his life with her.

The way she could find the answer when he was so close to tearing his hair out.

The way she followed his thoughts before he'd even spoken them, understanding his intention without needing him to explain.

_"I'm leaving next week."_

Charlie closed his eyes.

_The way she always left my heart in my throat._

He was brought back out of his subconsciousness by a sudden silence; the rain had stopped, and outside, a few rays of brilliant sunlight broke through the clouds. With a sigh he pulled himself to his feet, taking the untouched coffee and preparing to dump it into the garbage on his way out, when on the radio, a song caught his attention.

I can take the rain on the roof of this empty house  
That don't bother me  
I can take a few tears now and then and just let 'em out  
I'm not afraid to cry every once in awhile  
Even though going on with you gone still upsets me  
There are days every now and again I pretend I'm ok  
But that's not what gets me

What hurts the most  
was being so close  
and having so much to say  
and watching you walk away  
and never knowing  
what could have been  
and not seeing that loving you  
is what I was trying to do

Charlie sighed, turned away from the lobby and walked out into the sunshine.

.n.

"...So we're throwing her a going-away party on Friday, and I figured since you guys were the closest to her, you'd wanna be involved and all that," babbled the cheerful voice of Dr. Kitty Tatopoulos. Her overly-bubbly attitude wafted in almost-visible waves from the hall into Charlie's office, and he lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose. He never put much stock into chi, or the life energy that emanated from the body, but if Kitty Tat was channeling her intrusive energy at him, the tension headache brewing between his eyes was proof of such a thing.

From his desk, he could also hear Larry's much softer tones. From what he gathered, the cosmologist's reply was as ambiguous as they could get; not that one could tell from Tat's energetic, "Ok!" before she scampered back down the hall to her own corner of CalSci. Larry retreated back into the office, in one motion snagging the colorful 'Out to Lunch' sign and hanging it on the door before shutting it behind him. He gave Charlie a wide-eyed, horrified stare.

"I have been firmly convinced for quite a long time now that Kitty Tatopoulos has never even _heard_ of tact," he said resolutely. Charlie shrugged his eyebrows, never looking up from the Slinky he was playing with. Larry tipped his head, giving his former protégé a sympathetic look.

"How are you holding up, Charles?"

Another shrug, this time with his shoulders. "I, uh..." His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat, then tried again. "I'm fine." He smiled thinly. "I'm happy for her." The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared, twisting downward slightly. "It's just a big a..adjustment. To her not being... around."

Larry nodded, leaving the door and going to the desk where he picked up one of the many thingamabobs on Charlie's desk, fiddled with it. After a long moment of silence, he looked up at the younger man. "Things will work out, Charles. The universe has a way of straightening things out."

Charlie nodded quietly, taking a long moment before he lifted his gaze to meet Larry's. "It just feels like it's gonna be forever before it does."

.n.

The party was, despite the reason behind its inception, a hoppin' place to be. Considering that it was a going away party, many of the students in attendance were getting drunk to celebrate Amita's good fortune and to wish her good luck; a few others were drinking in sadness, extending the actual deadline for saying goodbye and using their extensions to repress the idea that their friend would be on the other side of the country by tomorrow.

Amita had only had a few beers when she realized Charlie hadn't made his way over to Tat's office, though she had seen him around only an hour before. Having hijacked the karaoke machine long enough to publicly ask if anyone had seen him, Amita tossed the microphone back at Madeleine Weaver, who immediately began belting out the worst rendition of "You Give Love a Bad Name" Amita had ever heard.

The hallways between offices and classrooms were silent as the grave, completely dark save for the light coming out of a few open doors here and there. Charlie's door was cracked open only just slightly; when she reached the door Amita paused to gain her bearings and then pushed it open gently, peeking in and looking for the scruffy mathematician.

He was asleep, arms folded on his desk and face buried into the corduroy of his sleeves. It concerned her that he had been so engrossed in work that he hadn't even bothered going home to go to sleep, and she went to his side as quietly as possible. He did, after all, have the tendency to be easily startled.

"Charlie," she whispered, lightly touching his shoulder. "Charlie, wake up."

"Mhm..." Only that vague murmur preceded his waking moments; within seconds his eyes flickered open and he sat up, looking around in a brief daze before finally looking up at her. "Oh.. Amita. What...?"

She suppressed a smile, patting his arm. "You fell asleep."

Charlie looked down at the work on his desk and then leaned into his palm, groaning. "Dammit."

"What?"

"It's a case for Don, I should get it done as soon as I can, I just..." He paused, fighting off a yawn. "...just got so sleepy."

Amita looked at the work on the board, recognizing the work as matching that which was on his desk. She examined it silently, chewing the tip of her tongue while she let her mind fly through different formulas. Then she looked down at Charlie. "Can I help?"

He lifted his head, and all at once she wanted to take it back. Take back the offer to help, take back her acceptance of the Harvard professorship, take back any decision she'd made regarding the lack of chemistry she'd had with him, take back anything wrong she'd ever done him. For a brief moment he looked so sad, so tired, his mouth drooping just so, eyes glazed with the veil of fatigue and shining with a sadness not yet transferred to liquid. He looked small, fragile, not at all the man she'd been attracted to before and yet, at the same time, exactly the same one.

For that brief moment, Amita wondered if he was something she could pass on.

And then the moment was gone and he nodded. "Yeah, please. I don't think I can think anymore."

Amita smiled at him, giving his shoulder a firm pat. "That's why I'm here. To help." Instantly she wondered if she should have said that; she was leaving in little more than twelve hours. In the silence that followed, from the party down the hall, a song was heard faintly.

It's hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go  
But I'm doing it  
It's hard to force that smile when I see our old friends and I'm alone  
Still harder  
Gettin' up, gettin' dressed, livin' with this regret  
But I know, if I could do it over  
I would trade, give away, all the words that I'd saved in my heart  
That I'd left unspoken

What hurts the most  
was being so close  
and having so much to say  
and watching you walk away  
and never knowing  
what could have been  
and not seeing that loving you  
is what I was trying to do

Amita looked at him, gauging him to see if he had anything to say. But if he did, he showed no sign.

But then, neither did she.

.n.

The airport terminal was crowded, as are most airports in general. People going this way and that, upways and downways and backways and forthways and any other kind of way; Alan was seriously considering throwing something shiny into the distance in hopes that some idiot would chase it and in doing so, get out of his way.

Despite all the multiple ways and the throngs of people to get lodged into those ways, the Eppes boys had somehow managed to get Amita to the airport, checked in, and to the gate, all with time to spare. So much time to spare, in fact, that the four of them got to sit ever-so-patiently in the waiting area, with absolutely nothing to do. And while Alan diligently tried to avoid poking his nose into his boys' lives, he couldn't help but note that Charlie's mood was dismal, at best.

_There's only so much moping he can do_, Alan told himself. _He'll get over it_.

At twenty to noon, almost an hour and a half after the flight was supposed to have left, the boarding call for Flight 529 to Boston came over the PA, and Amita took to her feet. "That's me," she said light-heartedly. Her small carry-on bag hanging loose in her grip, she turned to face the three men who had brought her to the threshold, and gave them a warm smile. "Thanks for driving me down here, Mr. Eppes."

Alan returned the smile. "Of course, Amita."

"Yeah, it's just a shame your parents couldnt've seen you off," said Don sympathetically. "But I hear that flu is pretty bad."

Amita laughed, shaking her head. "With Mom, I'd believe it. Dad, on the other hand... Big old baby and makes the biggest deal out of a tiny sniffle."

"Hey, hey now," interrupted Alan with mock reproach, "Let's not sully the good name of fathers everywhere."

Not surprisingly, absent from the cheerful banter was Charlie, who was rather interested in the pattern of the carpet. He chewed his lip, not knowing what to say, until he felt a familiar elbow digging into his ribs. He looked up to meet his brother's eyes.

"You're just gonna stand there like a dope, or are you gonna wish her goodbye?"

Charlie shot him a dirty look, to which Don took the hint and backed off; Alan stepped back as well. Standing alone at long last, Charlie looked up and met Amita's eyes. It was then he knew what he wanted to say. He stomped down the melancholy in him long enough to muster a smile, and said clearly, "Good luck."

The young woman smiled with relief, and she nodded. "Thanks, Charlie."

A few minutes passed that seemed to stretch on forever, the both of them just standing there awkwardly, before Charlie swallowed back a lump in his throat. Before he even realized the question had presented itself in his mind, he'd uttered it aloud. "You think maybe it was just the wrong time for us?"

Amita looked up at him, eyes wide, and then her expression mellowed, shoulders drooping slightly. She shook her head. "Maybe, Charlie."

He looked down at the floor dejectedly, and Amita bit her lip, gauging carefully what she was going to say next. "Maybe we were just meant to be friends."

Charlie couldn't help his voice from scratching. "We're not just friends though."

She nodded complacently. "I know. And you will always be very special to me." With that, she stepped forward, and gently kissed his cheek. She felt him tense under her hands, and when she pulled away, she reached up to brush back one of his long, bouncy curls, gazing at him meaningfully.

Then she turned, and walked out to the plane.

Charlie watched her until he couldn't see her anymore, then turned back to his brother and father. They had worked their way out of the crowd, leaving Charlie to say goodbye to Amita in private, and he found them waiting by the opposite wall. Even from his place just outside the flock of people, he could already see the worried expressions on their faces.

"You okay?" Don asked when Charlie reached them, watching his brother carefully. Charlie looked up at him with a wistful half-smile.

"I guess I'll have to be, won't I?"

Don clicked his tongue. "Sorry, man." Charlie shrugged wordlessly, and Don hooked his arm around his shoulders. "Well, look. We get you home, get some beer into you, you watch _Harry and the Hendersons_, cry at the end like you used to when you were a kid, and get it out of your system. You'll be fine."

Charlie snorted.

.n.

The moment the automatic doors opened, the chaotic noise of the unloading area overtook over the more-organized-but-just-as-chaotic noise of the inside of the airport, and the three Eppes hurried across the street to the parking lot as quickly as they could. On the way towards the car, they walked past a blue pick-up truck with its windows down and radio blaring. For the third time, Charlie caught the chorus of a song:

What hurts the most  
was being so close  
and having so much to say  
and watching you walk away  
and never knowing  
what could have been  
and not seeing that loving you  
is what I was trying to do

Charlie settled into the back seat of his dad's silver Acura, let his head drop onto the back wearily. Cracking his eyes open, he caught the sight of Amita's plane as it went airborne, and he lifted a hand in a symbolic wave. "Bye, Amita."

Not seeing that loving you...  
That's what I was trying to do

**END**


End file.
